Jennifer Aniston Hints at Brad Pitt Years: I Needed "Therapy"

In the September issue of Glamour, Jennifer Aniston hints to We're the Millers costar Jason Sudeikis that she needed "therapy" during her five-year marriage to Brad Pitt.Credit: Alexei Hay/Glamour

IfJennifer Aniston could go back it time, it sounds like she'd do a few things differently during her five-year marriage to Brad Pitt. In the September issue of Glamour, the 44-year-old actress has a frank discussion with her We're the Millers costar, Jason Sudeikis, about how she wishes she would have gone to therapy in her thirties, but why she's finally happy with fiance Justin Theroux. Aniston threw a dinner party at her house in Los Angeles and let Sudeikis, 37, interview her for the magazine.

"In the movie, your character is learning to access her parental instincts," the former Saturday Night Live actor, who is engaged to Olivia Wilde, told Aniston. "I would argue women are better at that."

"I think that's just you! I know Justin, for instance, has extremely amazing paternal instincts," she said of her fiance of nearly one year. "Because [growing up] he had to sort of become the parent. I think when you have to become the parent when you're a younger person, you learn those instincts." (Theroux is the son of Phyllis, a journalist, and Eugene, a corporate lawyer, and has a younger brother, Sebastian.)

"I noticed on set that you had very maternal instincts with [costar] Emma Roberts," Sudeikis noted. "I did," Aniston agreed. "But she's wise beyond her years." Still, the actress added that she's had those mama instincts "all throughout my life."

Aniston also opened up what advice she'd give herself in her thirties. At that time in her life, the actress was going through a very public divorce from Pitt.

Credit: Alexei Hay/Glamour

"Thirties. Go to therapy. Clean up all of the s--t. Clean up all of the toxins and the noise," Aniston said. "Understand who you are. Educate yourself on the self." She added, "You can undo a lot of things. If you're not happy, you can become happy. Happiness is a choice. That's the thing I really feel. Like with friends who refuse to get happy, who refuse to rise above the discomfort of where they're at."

"It's almost like your character Rose from We're the Millers," Sudeikis said of Aniston's stripper character. "'This is all I deserve' kind of thinking. It's like, no, you deserve . . ."

"You actually deserve to have a family," Aniston chimed in. "And once you meet yourself, and truly love yourself, then you attract that. And look -- I mean, the two of us have found these two, beautiful, loving, open people."

Sudeikis was previously married to writer Kay Cannon from 2004 to 2010. He became engaged to Wilde, 29, in January 2013. "We have a similar timeline," Sudeikis told his costar. "We both went through the same thing. I mean, I would hear you talk about [guys you were dating], and I'd be like, 'Oh, f--k. I don't want to be like that to somebody else.'"